Luftwaffe Officers schirmutze : Erel Privat

[BenVK]

Anyone know where the description "bullion" came from? Certainly not from the original German product lists.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

You can check the Oxford English dictionary. I use the term as others do in the English speaking world. I assume it has French roots, no?
The German term is gestickt, or bestickt, for embroidered, but they also used French and English terms for regalia and tailoring, too.

[BenVK]

Knowing nothing about the subject and having read very little about it either, it would make interesting reading to learn about the history of military embroidery.
An antique roadshow type tv program I watched recently turned up the most fantastic pair of British Officer's 19th century epaulets in the original box. Sold for a few hundred pounds. Bearing in mind the rate of inflation, they peobably cost more than double that to make during the time!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

All of this constituted the luxury goods and trades used at court. The dynastic courts of the leading powers had their own tradesmen and women, in this case, who did embroidery for those great and good of the era. Court ceremonials and dress required such costumes to demonstrate power and rank. In Britain it is much easier to get at these things than at other points of the compass. The system of Hoflieferanten exists still in Britain, does it not?
That is, purveyors of goods to the crown and court? How sad that the handicrafts are such an arcane thing in a totally homogenized, cheapo made world.
I still cannot get over how the quality of upholstery in my Swabian car has decline from 1999 until the year before last. This consumer thingy of today is for the birds.

[BenVK]

Hand and Lock Embroidery

Still in business since 1767. I've been there, most of the skilled employees are from the Baltic States. My lady is from Lithuania actualy and I've been there numerours times. A facinating place, being the natural gateway from West Europe to the East, it's seen numerours Wars and conflicts. The saddest part is that the younger generation don't care about the history. They just desire i-pods, McDonalds and the rest of it. I would despare because I knew more about their country than most of them.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Your embroidery company is a remnant of the institutions of which I wrote above, which were to be found all over Europe with dynastic courts. We all need a revival of the late 19th century arts and crafts movement, but work is so debased in our world with globalization that there is no hope. The slow food movement is such a thing, but it is also a plaything for the privileged, which none of is any longer. We are on the verge of losing what little we have got, plainly.


Here are some images of textiles in Luftwaffe caps, one of which is Eskimo (top) I am pretty certain.

I also include someone's medley of blue piping in army caps, a struggle that has no end when it comes to this regalia.

Happy foetid woolens. My thanks to the generous souls and their fine regalia.

[locloc08]

I like Abgesunkeneskulturgut myself and think it apropos to this discussion.

I hate to be a dingbat, but might someone provide an idiomatic translation of the above?

[reneblacky]

I hate to be a dingbat, but might someone provide an idiomatic translation of the above?

Going by a babel fish translator it's "Dropping cultural property"

[Friedrich-Berthold]

absinken means to drop, descend etc, but also in the sense of cultural property, to decline. Kulturgut has its own meanings which I cannot characterize here easily. The Leo website on German English translation is a good one.

I do not think that old Nazi foetid woolens qualify as a Kulturgut, but arts and crafts of the middle ages, graphic arts, musical manuscripts, and the like are Kulturgut. Or the contents of the Museum fuer angewandte Kunst in Vienna is also Kulturgut as would be many other examples you could care to mention. Others can extent my list or dispute it.

I am very fond of foetid woolens, and books are a Kulturgut, really, as is historical costume in a way, of course. Our foetid woolens, though, are still too controversial and provoking in their place of origin. Also do not respond with political diatribes, please. They are for the other websites.

[locloc08]

absinken means to drop, descend etc, but also in the sense of cultural property, to decline. Kulturgut has its own meanings which I cannot characterize here easily. The Leo website on German English translation is a good one.

I do not think that old Nazi foetid woolens qualify as a Kulturgut, but arts and crafts of the middle ages, graphic arts, musical manuscripts, and the like are Kulturgut. Or the contents of the Museum fuer angewandte Kunst in Vienna is also Kulturgut as would be many other examples you could care to mention. Others can extent my list or dispute it.

I am very fond of foetid woolens, and books are a Kulturgut, really, as is historical costume in a way, of course. Our foetid woolens, though, are still too controversial and provoking in their place of origin. Also do not respond with political diatribes, please. They are for the other websites.

Thank you for this. Am I correct in characterizing it as an adaption of elements from a "high" culture to a more "common" one? Some readings on line seem to suggest this?

I'm not sure to whom you were referring about the diatribes, but that was certainly not my intention if it was me! My comment about being a dingbat was absolutely self-deprecating. I did not mean to imply that others were being esoteric and I apologize if it came off that way.